Sky Bet continues international push with Sky Deutschland partnership
Operator supports media company's launch of Super 6 product ahead of a planned real-money debut
Sky Betting and Gaming (SB&G) has teamed up with media giant Sky Deutschland to launch its Super 6 product in Germany, as the operator continues to extend its reach into international markets.
6erPack (available at 6erpack.sky.de) was debuted by Sky Deutschland in recent weeks supported on the technology side by SB&G, which has similar products in available in both the UK and Italian markets.
And the Germany-facing weekly free-to-play game follows the same format, enabling customers to win a 100,000 jackpot for correctly guessing the scores of six Bundesliga football matches.
The release of 6erPack will be followed by a real-money Sky Bet sportsbook product, although the Leeds-based operator said it had yet to establish a set timeframe.
“It is far too early to tell [as] we are currently just examining the market and how we could enter it,” Jochen Weiner, managing director of Sky Bet Deutschland, told EGR.
“The regulatory regime has its challenges to overcome but given the estimated 4.8bn and 7% year-on-year growth in turnover in 2015, there is clearly a healthy market in Germany.”
Weiner, who was previously head of Deutsche Telekom’s sportsbook arm, was hired in September to lead SB&G’s expansion into the largely unregulated German market.
SB&G has long cited Germany and Italy as the first international markets it would enter due to the strength of the Sky brand, which includes 4.5 million Sky Deutschland subscribers.
The launch of 6erPack coincides with news that the German online gambling market could soon open up after state leaders agreed to remove the contentious cap on the number of sports betting licences.
The leaders of the 16 states reached a provisional agreement to abolish the licence limit, German-facing firms are still in the dark about how quickly the expanded licences could be issued.